Abstract

2 CDs of traditional songs in English and an extensive booklet of 96 pages containing transcriptions of texts and music together with accompanying notes and indices. (Derry: Beaghmore Publications, December 2009). Distributed by Claddagh Records, Dublin http://claddaghrecords.com/WWW/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=3036 and by Ossian Publications, USA http://www.ossianusa.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PLST&Store_Code=ossian.These two CDs and accompanying booklet present field-recordings of forty songs, some lilting and a few speech items. The material was recorded by Peter Smith and Francis Clarke between 1980 and 1991 in the Plumbridge and Broughderg areas of North Tyrone; and in the Gortin, Greencastle, Creggan, and Beaghmore areas of Mid Tyrone. The collection includes local compositions from the early twentieth century like ‘The Creggan White Hare’; late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Irish ballads in English like ‘Willie Reilly and His Colleen Bawn’, and older ballads from the English and Scottish traditions like ‘Lord Beichan’.